So I’ve tried Mastodon, Pixelfed and didn’t like them. Mastodon is nice if you wanna ”tweet”, but that’s not for me. Pixelfed was dead.
I quit Meta because of tech bro fascism, and hated Twitter even before it was X because, let’s face it - nobody has ever changed their opinion on anything because of a Twitter conversation (I know I’m exaggerating, to get my point across). I was in Reddit for a few weeks, and the conversations there seem mostly friendly and constructive, but I decided I don’t want to have anything to do with social media corporations. Besides, I noticed I could scroll endlessly. And that’s not good for me.
Lemmy seems nice. There are still some topics I’m interested in that don’t have active communities, and I’m still learning on how to have my feed from multiple instances. But still, this is the way to go for me.
Against algorithms, against fascism, for free internet. Thanks for coming to my boring Ted talk and have a nice day.
I’m hoping Lemmy grows more so that the niche communities (that were still relatively active on reddit, even for their neichness) can start to have regular threads going.
What I’d also like to see is posts that I can spend 5-10 minutes in because they have more comments than the ~5 we have now.
The biggest issue of community growth is the lack priority in search engines. If you ask a question on lemmy, stackoverflow, and reddit at the same time, you will get the two latter choices first even if the lemmy post has a better answer.
Either lemmy is not prioritized because of the age of the domain, or less visitors, but I think it’s purposely done. There are usually no ads on lemmy. Google prioritizes sites that use their products.
I think, as well as the issues you mention, another issue might possibly be duplication. Historically, search engines penalise duplicated content, even across different domains and federation kind of bakes that in.
That’s a great point.
Search engines should fix this for federated websites if they still want the best search results.
For a solution now, I wonder if a 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code, redirecting to the original instance post, could work for search crawlers.
I really wish more people had taken on the “Community Ambassador” work that I’ve done for https://fediverser.network/. It could be really helpful in creating a focal point for everyone that wanted to help the migration of people interested in a specific niche.
Where can I read more about this? I’m not getting far with the link 🫤
- Sign up to Fediverser
- Search for communities for your interests.
- The community should be associated with a subreddit. If it’s not, you can make a suggestion for the change.
- Apply to become a Community Ambassador. I’ll approve it. Once you are approved, you will be able to do the following:
- See the posts from the subreddit that is associated to the community.
- Send DMs to people on Reddit, inviting them to join Lemmy and your community
- Add other sources of contents (RSS feeds)
There were more things that I had planned, such as the ability to do one-click repost of interesting links, but I didn’t get to it because that would mean effectively that I would have to turn the fediverser site into a an alternative Lemmy frontend.
Yeah, every time I see people saying that they like the amount of users now just makes me think “hmmm must be nice that all of your particular niches and tastes are accounted for”. It’s pretty silly to be so anti growth for this place anyway. Even on Reddit, you literally have a choice to take part in the bigger ‘default’ subs or find a smaller one if that suits you. And I like choice.
This place still has a long way to go IMO. I’m starting to resort to lurking chat / ask style communities more just for something to do around here and even there, it’s not quite as engaging or active as it should be. As a humble user, sometimes I don’t have something particular in mind that I want to see. Sometimes I just want to bed rot and scroll and read people’s stories and discussions, maybe give my two cents if I feel so inclined. And there isn’t really that here yet because once you’ve checked AskLemmy or whatever, you’ve already seen 90% of the content for the next week.
I’ve already settled on making lemmy my new home a long while ago. I like it here and there is more than enough engagement.
What i can’t really find an alternative for is discord… it’s going through the “enshittification fascism techbro” phase.
I tried matrix but honestly it sucks, Its so incredibly buggy it’s barely even usable. I’m still willing to give it a try since it seems very promising but the instability is a big downside.
What exactly do you need from a Discord replacement?
There’s a LOT of options, with varying features so if you don’t need certain things it gets a lot easier to suggest what might work.
Yes Lemmy communities are nice but you will notice quickly that there are part you may want to avoid. So each communities, even if they may have the same name offer a different experience. It’s all up to the mod team 😅
Btw, there are other software part of the forumverse as Mbin, NodeBB and PieFed that offer a slightly different experience and UI too
Welcome and enjoy :)
Some platforms are dead but we can change that. If more people post on a “dead” platform it will get alive. I also feel that some communities are missing but we can also change that. If you scroll endlessly then maybe try to be on maybe just some social media platforms. I really like Lemmy and hope you will also like it in the future.
How did you find out about Lemmy out of interest?
From Reddit.
Given all you have tried the only thing more I could say is trust cafe by the wikipedia guy. Unfortunately its not federated but it does have this neat thing where you can rate everything. Its basically like nuanced subscribe and block. You rate things between zero and 100 and I think zero would effictively be the same as blocking (which you can still do) and 100 would be the same as subscribing (which you can still do). Everything by default starts at a rating of 50. So its like you can be. mmmm. I like this guys post I will move him to 60. Or this guy seems a bit annoying I will drop him to 40 for now. Then over time the blocks and subscribes come out naturally.
If you want for something here, it’s a new place, make it. We’re all over here building a new way to do this thing, and everyone’s input is important. What do you want to see, that you haven’t found on Fedi?
Actually since I quit Insta etc. I’ve been pretty happy about leaving social media. Tried Bluesky also, but like Mastodon, the Twitter-kind of social media is not for me. Reddit felt helpful and people seemed nice. Right now I don’t feel like I need anything new. I hope Lemmy will be enough for me. I’m also trying to scroll my phone less.
I hear you on the scroll less. Time limits help me to not be obsessively scrolling. Emphasizing quality over quantity also helps. Cheers!
Cheers!
I quit Meta because of tech bro fascism, and hated Twitter even before it was X because, let’s face it - nobody has ever changed their opinion on anything because of a Twitter conversation (I know I’m exaggerating, to get my point across). I was in Reddit for a few weeks […]
I’m assuming you previously used Facebook mostly, right? If so, there’s also a Facebook alternative called Friendica, with pretty much the same core functionality as Facebook (sans Marketplace). Besides that, you can also format your posts and comments, add titles to them, get a dislike button and customize your experience more than you could do there. Plus you can also follow Lemmy communities straight from there, as well as Mastodon accounts, Flipboard publications etc.
Check out friendica.world to try it out.
Meh … I wish there was a middle ground. Non-corporate, yet effective. Unfortunately, the Fediverse is only the first.
Discovery algorithms can be great, if applied with care. And I really think ActivityPub is not very effective at showing interesting stuff, while from a user perspective it’s super intransparent. Personally I’d prefer a centralized user experience to the Fediverse fragmentation any day … I guess I’m really only here because I’m fed up with corporate bullshit.
I’m with you.
Thankfully, corporate bullahit isn’t the only way to create a discovery algorithm.
I expect that we will have a diverse set of discovery algorithms available to opt into here, in a few years.
Same. I have no interest in corporate social media.
For some reason I feel like all of these things need to be three word phrases so this two word one, I must change it to “Alles Gegen Nazis”
Lemmy is just left wing politics in an echo chamber
I guess you’re getting downvoted by those offended. It absolutely is.
Note: I am left, communist in fact, but the way political topics are discussed is a clear doomer circlejerk. I’d love to at least see more variety over “Trump is stupid, Elon is mad, senators are bootlickers, death to Nazis, we’re all gonna die”. Like, yeah, we got it and we know it. What next? Any political action, maybe?
Believe it or not, but I also am a leftist. Social democrat.
I say a lot of bad stuff though. Like: old people that did not have kids, should have less pension and use the money they have been saving up by not having kids.
This is seen as insane, but… old people are the wealthiest class in most societies.
Yes there are exceptions and these people need help. High minimum pension for sure. They need a decent life.
But why would I want someone who didn’t even have a kid to replace themselves as productive entity to gain a fantastic passive income on top of their already passive income generating assets?
a compromise would be something as simple as: retired person above age 65 gets +amount of euros per working child in insert home country.
It would incentivise having kids.
The reaction I get usually is that it’s inhumane, that people are seen as production houses only, that people don’t wanna be born… A lot of doomer stuff to be honest.
It would be fun if there’s a place where you can only deny an idea if you can replace it with your own solution to the issue. In this case “aging population” (popular issue in Belgium right now)
I fail to see advantages over the expansion of direct support for families with kids.
If such families would be adequately supported, parents wouldn’t be so financially disadvantaged and this would automatically resolve the issue of assets as well.
Paying it as part of pensions on the condition of children working in the home country makes people’s finances directly reliant on the actions of independent actors (their adult children) and punishes people who, for example, cannot have children in the first place due to medical reasons, lack of a partner, etc. It also doesn’t bring financial support when it’s needed the most.
And relying on asset accumulation and personal investments as a source of pension funding is quite odd to me to begin with, as salaries don’t always reflect the good done for society (for example, public sector work is often paid more poorly, despite bringing maximum value for the state), and also because personal investments cannot be done with the same precision, competence and risk management as the funds do (and even if you invest in funds, they take a cut). I believe asset accumulation should be minimized in favor of public support nets (including decent pensions and good living conditions for everyone).
These families already are adequately supported. We need to find a way to guide people into the actions we want them to do.
Like, they want me to stop using the car to work. Okay, they allow everyone at my hospital to use their taxes to pay for a commuting e bike. It’s a financial incentive. (Don’t worry I’m not a healthcare worker, just administration, I am not the right person to work with people in need).
Indeed there are exceptions and therefore exemptions. If a medical examination says that it’s difficult for you or your partner to have children, then they’d be exempted of any punishment.
I don’t think it’s psychologically a smart move to punish not having kids, but to reward having kids. That’s why I say “extra pension”. (By behind closed doors reducing pensions in general first, but they don’t know that).
Helping people that can’t have kids… We could allocate resources to them to help them adopt a child. Something like that. Once again, psychologically it would help them accept this. People give them the option that nature didn’t provide them.
We’re competing against the funds actually. I own ETFs that tracks the Stoxx 600. It has a yearly expense of 0,07% while bank funds would take like 2% or whatever.
Personally I’m not even thinking about my pension, cannot know what will happen in 37 years so I’m definitely taking it into my two own hands to accumulate assets.
Now, I understand why a pension is desirable. It’s a safety net. And I agree with that. High minimum pension for anyone who is unable to work due to old age. Just like for people who can’t work for other reasons.
But as Belgian, I know a lot of people that try and take advantage of our social safety nets. For a lot of people it’s not because they need it, but view it as an extra passive income while doing nothing.
That’s damaging to the social democrats. We need to get rid of the abuse, the corruption. We need to motivate people to do effort and reward that. And we have. Minimum wage in Belgium is quite high. Income inequality is 0,26 gini. Median net wealth is 250k euros.
Motivating people to have kids is also a necessity. To live more together in the same household. To use fewer resources. Be economically sustainable in the long term.
People are scared in Belgium, everyone is retiring. We’ve been accepting a lot of immigrants to help us out with this. Luckily, second generation immigrants are tremendously helpful.
To have a meaningful social net, we do need a good amount of people that can work. That can be parents.
We need to motivate people. And everyone that really cannot help society with this, they are exempted of course.
My friend her parents never worked a day in their lives. It’s absolutely normal. Her dad’s disabled and her mom takes care of him.
But another guy “didn’t work for 10 years cuz his knees hurt” while he randomly showed up at our hospital working, magically, when he’d lose his free passive income. He’s doing a desk job. Like everyone else.
In my eyes, being adequately supported means not having any financial difference between having vs not having children. If that would be the case, there wouldn’t be a financial incentive to not have them.
If we go above that (incentivise parenting even more), it’s just throwing money at the problem in hopes it will go away. If someone will only have kids if they’ll be rewarded on top of having extra expenses covered, they are basically parenting for money and this won’t end well.
As per taking advantage of the social system - the more people overclaim something, the better the regulations become. There could be a certain ceiling on the types of support that could be taken at the same time, for example. As per unemployed folks living on subsidies - unless they have a valid reason they can’t work (and there are those), they should get mandatory public employment if they stay in the unemployed status for a while - one that would respect their disabilities and limitations, if there are any, of course.
I’m literally going to financially reward my wife for taking time off work in order to take care of our kid.
Parenting is labour. When you’re parenting, you can’t be doing a different job.
My wife’s parents in Indonesia don’t have a pension much. It’s barely anything. Her mom just gets money from my wife and her 2 sisters.
That’s how it used to be for a long time, pension is relatively new.
So in the vast majority of history, parents always were financially rewarded for having children.
Median age in Indonesia is 30, while in Belgium it’s 42. While we’re far wealthier in resources. People just stopped having children because it wasn’t necessary anymore.
We can’t act like this isn’t a problem, unless the people that willingly caused the aging population issue take full responsibility and go through hardships in order to help the society battle a period of low work force.
That’s you, but it should be on the state level so that every parent is given everything to make parenthood go smooth.
People got used to comfort and are not willing to sacrifice their standards of living for having children, especially through a recession. Make them feel secure about their present and future - and birth rates will grow.
I’m an FC St. Pauli fan too…“Gegen Nazis,” but also against the Communists too.
yeah what’s even the difference between exterminating minorities and giving laborers ownership of the means of production anyway
Karl Marx, in theory is 100% correct, but humans will find a way to fuck it all up. The Communists were just as nasty, corrupt and power hungry as the Nazis.
Karl Marx, in theory is 100% correct
No, he’s really not. He’s completely wrong. Life is about more than eating, sleeping and working. Communism is a good approach if survival of mankind is on the line, but not if we actually want to live our lives.
